Studies of the acquisition of verbs tend to focus on one-verb predicates of the prevalent English type. But in hundreds of languages around the world, multi-verb predicates like serial verb constructions are widely used. It could be reasoned that children should begin producing simple, single-verb predicates before they are able to produce multi-verb predicates. But alternatively, many multi-verb predicates are idiomatic and could, as chunks, lend themselves to holophrastic acquisition by small children. This article examines early productions of multi-verb predicates in the speech of three children (aged 1;1–2;4, 2;1–3;3, and 2;10–3;3) acquiring the Papuan language Nungon, comparing patterns there with productions in the child-directed speech of their parents, and with the children’s productions of simple, one-verb predicates. The study’s youngest child never produces multi-verb predicates in the study period, but the child studied for the widest age range produces them from age 2;4, when she has still not acquired productive use of all verbal inflections, and both older children show proportionally increasing trends in multi-verb predicate use. Semantically, the earliest multi-verb predicates can be analyzed as describing multidimensional unitary events, with this expanding to events that can be divided into multiple distinct components at later ages. Delays in production of certain other multi-verb predicate types that are robustly present in parental input at all ages cannot be linked to a single factor, but likely relate to a combination of increased phonological or morphological complexity and increased conceptual difficulty.

动词习得的研究往往集中在流行英语类型的单动词谓词上。但是，在世界各地的数百种语言中，诸如动词构造之类的多动词谓词被广泛使用。可以认为，孩子应该在能够产生多动词谓词之前就开始产生简单的单动词谓词。但可替代地，许多多动词谓语是惯用的，并且可以作为小块，使其适合于小孩的整体习得。本文考察了三个孩子（分别为1; 1–2; 4、2; 1–3; 3和2; 10–3; 3）获得巴布亚语Nungon的语音中早期多动词谓词的产生，并进行了比较。的模式与父母在以孩子为母语的言语中的产生式以及孩子在单动词谓词中的产生方式有关。该研究的最小的孩子在研究期间从不产生多动词谓词，但是在最大年龄范围内进行研究的孩子从2; 4岁开始就产生了这些谓词，当时她仍未获得所有言语拐点的生产性使用，并且两个大孩子都表现出多动词谓词使用中的比例趋势呈比例上升。从语义上讲，最早的多动词谓语可以被描述为描述多维单一事件，并且这种现象扩展到可以在以后年龄划分为多个不同成分的事件。各个年龄段的父母输入中强烈存在的某些其他多动词谓词类型的产生延迟不能与单个因素联系在一起，而可能与语音或形态复杂性增加以及概念难度增加的组合有关。